I don't know if this is common knowledge, but if you prep the Titan Guitar, it will destroy all the walls on the level on start. This can be crazy powerful with a prepped earthmother. I can easily get 11 or 12 shots of vine form or greenblood on pretty much any map this way, and as a side benefit, the titan guitar slows everything when you use it, so you can even get xp when you petrify enemies!

The disadvantage you get from prepping earthmother is even helpful in this situation; during the end game you have plenty of piety and plants to fuel many clearances (and those fireballs are especially painful to an enemy with 12 layers of corrosion, aren't they?).

Heheh, nice use for that guitar. Won't survive past this coming Friday, though.

While we're on the subject, something needs to be done about that subdungeon. Fully-explored and containing only a single-use item that is also double-edged and whose effect can be reproduced more effectively by boons and glyphs? The subdungeon needs something, the guitar on its own is a poor reward and completely useless to Earthmother followers or someone who found WEYTWUT early.

A very nice thing about the guitar is that it also coincides with the "free locker/veto slot" thing from last week or a week ago an is doing wonders for my labyrinth completion ^^

Four more runs and if the PQI streakiness had been fixed like the current patch notes say labyrinth'll be out of the picture ^^

And it's kind of fun to see what the maps look like without walls, and I needed a fun reason to go on a massive gold/completion grind for more VGT runs. All the scumming and fireball retaliation blunders hit my coffers hard...

(Plus, it's not a guaranteed win - you still prep it instead of whateve you'd prep otherwise, and for the prep dependent guys it's still tricky)

I just tried this. I'm glad that the devs let it stay. It's like a weird easter egg game mode.

Predictably, I used this to take Earthmother into dungeons where she had never been successful before. Naga City is great because you can (and should) spend all of your piety on Vine Form. Without the prospect of a boss to Clearance-bomb, you can go nuts with health stacking. I left the surface at level 10, 2 points shy of the next milestone, 100 piety banked up, and 13 stacks of Vine Form. I probably could have stacked on 1 or 2 more Vine Forms if I had really tried.

The classic Dwarf Healthmonster would probably work, but you'd have to scum for Fireheart. Earthmother doesn't offer a percentage based heal like Glowing Guardian, but you should be able to convert to whomever you want the moment you enter the arena.

I'm thinking that a dedicated damage reduction build might work. DR rarely scales hard enough to stay relevant in VICIOUS, but the blacksmith shield + 13-15 Vine Form + a scummed Platemail would yield an impressive 35-37 DR, which is roughly equivalent to 35% for the stronger bosses and is more like 50-80% against the weaker ones. Toss in a Vampiric Blade for added hilarity.

Just tried a Human Priest healthmonster of EM in Naga City using the damage reduction stacking idea. It doesn't dominate the way that a Rogue can, be it' still fun and effective. The worst part is scumming for the Platemail. You don't have to have it, but it's what makes the approach unique.

I left the surface with 100 piety, 38 DR and well over 200 health. Converted to Dracul and took two hits of Blood Hunger, upping my effective DR all the way to 58. A hit of Blood Tithe meshed well with my large health pool and is almost free. If you kept a burn salve on you, you can desecrate EM for more piety. After you've emptied you piety, take Consensus and escape to some other god that will let you use your potions. A health stacked human priest with the Keg of Health + Yendor from the arena is a beast, especially when you shrug off the first 58 points of every attack.

Fun facts about damage reduction versus resistance:1) It isn't affected by the side effect of Blood Hunger2) It stacks with Blood Hunger in a non-linear fashion3) It is not affected by Binlor's wrath, giving you another desecration. Had I realized that earlier, I would have taken 3 hits of Blood Hunger and would have had an effective DR of 68.